I’VE GOT THEM CALVES TO VEAL
It’s a jolly sort of season, is the spring—is the
spring,
And there isn’t any reason for not feeling like a
king.
The sun has got flirtatious and he kisses Mis-
tress Maine,
And she pouts her lips, a-saying, “Mister, can’t
you come again?”
The hens are all a-laying, the potatoes sprouting
well,
And fodder spent so nicely that I’ll have some
hay to sell.
But when I get to feeling just as well as I can feel,
All to once it comes across me that I’ve got
them calves to veal.
Oh! I can’t go in the stanchion, look them
mothers in the eye,
For I’m meditatin’ murder; planning how their
calves must die.
Every time them little shavers grab a teat, it
wrings my heart,
—Hate to see ’em all so happy, for them cows
and calves must part.
That’s the reason I’m so mournful; that’s the
reason in the spring
I go feeling just like Nero or some other wicked
thing,
For I have to slash and slaughter; have to set
an iron heel
On the feelings of them mothers; I have got
them calves to veal.
Spring is happy for the poet and the lover and
the girl,
But the farmer has to do things that will make
his harslet curl.
And the thing that hits me hardest is to stand
the lonesome moos
Of that stanchion full of critters when they find
they’re going to lose
Little Spark-face, Little Brindle—when the
time has come to part,
And the calves go off a-blatting in a butcher’s
rattling cart.
Though the cash the butcher pays me sort of
smooths things up and salves
All the really rawest feeling when I sell them
little calves,
Still I’m mournful in the springtime; knocks
me off my even keel,
Seeing suffering around me when I have them
calves to veal.